PLANET DOTA: Guide To Viewing Replays on Dota

Guide To Viewing Replays

How replay Works:

A Warcraft III replay is actually loading a map as you would do when you play. But instead of you controlling the game, the Warcraft III is actually reading a script (the replay file) and following it. This leads to a much smaller file size than if Blizzard made the replay to be like a video, because all that is in a replay file is the events that was played out in the game.

Limitations:

1) You can't rewind a replay.
2) Your WarCraft III versions should match with the version in which version game has been played.

What you Should Do Before Downloading a Replay:

1)Your version of Warcraft III must be same as the version the replay was saved in. Replays are not backward-compatible, (e.g: a 1.20 version replay cannot be played on a 1.21 version of Warcraft III.)

2)Put the Maps in X:\Program Files\Warcraft III\Maps\Download in Download Folder,If there is no Download Folder make yourself by right-clicking > New > Folder. Rename this Folder to Download (Case Sensitive) and get maps only from getdota.com. Where X is the letter of a Hard Drive name like C, D, E, F, .... in which your Warcraft III is installed.

3)Put the downloaded replays in X:\Program Files\Warcraft III\replay in replay folder.

Viewing Replays:

Go to Single Player

Click Option View Replay

Select Replay and Click View Replay Or Double-Click it to View Replay.

Saving a Replay:

1)Rename your LastReplay.w3g to some thing else (e.g; My_Tiny_11-4.w3g). LastReplay.w3g file is the last game you played.

2)When game finishes, there is an option Save Replay, Click it and Name this file.

Replay files should be saved at your X:\Program Files\Warcraft III\Replays folder, where X is the letter of the drive where Warcraft III is installed.

Errors:

1)The map file associated with the replay could not be found.

Please Make sure the map file 'Maps\Download\DotA Allstars vX.xx' used by the recorded exists and try again.

Do as the RED line indicates.
Solution:
You need to download the required DotA Allstars vX.xx (say v6.37) and put the downloaded map into your Warcraft III\Maps\Download Folder (As the screen shot above suggested).

Actually, the location / folder depends on wherever the replay saver had kept the particular map. In "most" cases, people place this inside the download folder, but it does vary from person to person.

Links to Maps:

2)This replay data is for different version of Warcraft III

Solution:
You have to patch your version of WarCraft III: TFT to the latest patch (1.21) ether by:
A: Clicking on the Battle.net button on the main menu of WarCraft.
or
B: Going to the following link and downloading the patch.
Battle.Net Patch/The Frozen Throne Patch Information.

To view Old patch Replays, Check this link Viewing old patch replays

3) The replay file could not be loaded

Solution:
The replay file is incomplete, corrupt, or was a game that was played over GGClient/ListChecker/Hamachi.
A: Download the replay again, but instead of saving it to your computer. Just open it directly.

B: Download the replay with a download manager.
Note: Compare the size of the downloaded replay with the uploaded file. It needs to exactly match with the uploaded one.

UseFul Links:

--------------

Index.php Issue

When you download the replay with a Download Manager, It's default that it will save the replay in index.php as shown in the screen shots:

IPB Image

Better Rename (Save As:) the index.php to ReplayName.w3g when you start downloading. If you forgot to rename the index.php to ReplayName.w3g, When the file finished Downloading rename the file to ReplyName.w3g. Download manager's also auto rename the file.

To rename the file from index.php to ReplyName.w3g, changing the extension. First of all, you got to make sure that your windows shows the extensions. Do this by going to Tools > Folder Options from My Computer. Then select the 'View' Tab and make sure that the 'Hide Extensions to know File Types' Box is unchecked.